Over 16 million units of red blood cells (RBCs) are transfused yearly in the United States to meet the clinical need of critically ill patients following trauma, surgery, or cancer chemotherapy. Currently, the supply of RBCs for transfusion is solely dependent on donors, which is associated with infectious risk, high costs of screening, and supply bottlenecks, especially for rare blood types. Over the next several decades the needs for red cell transfusions will increase as the U.S. population ages. Therefore, alternative sources for blood transfusions are needed.
The generation of erythrocytes using embryonic stem (ES) cell-based approaches is limited by scalability and limited methodology for generating erythrocyte progenitors. Although previous technologies have used bone marrow-derived and cord blood-derived hematopoietic stem cells, usable production of erythroid progenitors has not been achieved. Conversely, technologies exist for terminal differentiation and enucleation of erythroid progenitors, however, production of ample amounts of the “starting cells” has not been successful (Giarratana, 2011). The present invention addresses this unmet need in the art.